2023-2024 Projects
Rachel Fitzsimmons & Emery Moore – Riverside Orientation Videos
Soren French – Environmental Injustice: The Virginia School for the Deaf, Blind, & Multi-Disabled
Katelyn Bowersox – Engaging Youth and Youth Adults with Serve the City
Sharayah McDonald – Sustainable Grants and Partnerships
Caroline Dillard – Fear to Hope 23-24
Alex Arena – Fear to Hope Mentorship
Madelyn Steimer – Data Integrity in Fear to Hope
Dayman Parrish – Newport News NAACP Youth Program
Shannon O’Keefe – TNR Program in Newport News
Tia Tucker and Brooke Coleman – The Tidewater Community Writing Center
Colby Baker – Remarketing of Peninsula Agency on Aging, Inc.
2022-2023 Projects
Abigail Asuncion & Leslie Bond – Tidewater Community Writing Center
Regan Craze – A Clean Slate is Music to My Ears!!
Rachel Fitzsimmons & Emery Moore – Riverside Volunteer Videos
Jonathan Goodrich – Our Hope Will Rise…
Henry Harris & Aidan Rucker – Emergency Response Education in Newport News Public Schools
Jade Heider – The Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award and the One City Marathon
Dahria Kalmbach & Lucas Sharrett – Fear to Hope
Christopher Mojica – Captains Afterhours
Katherine Paulikonis – Barriers to Cancer Treatment for Black Women in Newport News and Hampton, VA
2021-2022 Projects
Amanda Ballou & Zenith Nguon – The Tidewater Community Writing Center
Dahria Kalmbach – Urban Agriculture
Ke’alani Sison – GiveItUP! Waste Diversion for Move-Out
Katherine Claire Vander Vennet – Community Building in the Newport News Public School System
Audrey White – City of Newport News and Executive Order 77
2020-2021 Projects
Peter Miller – Peninsula Emergency Response Training
- Mission Statement: While teaching and instructing first aid to the surrounding community has remained at the forefront of this project’s mission, the greater goal to protect, save, and improve life within the peninsula through health training and education has taken many new forms through the endeavors of CERO as the host organization. Instruction classes within the community were largely placed on hold and several trainings of our own members were postponed, but CERO continued to meet, recruit new members, welcome in a new leadership team of nine officers, develop organizational structure, and learn and teach life saving skills. The addition of newly trained EMTs and several newly trained first-aid instructors continues to increase the ability of the community to respond to emergencies as well as share the knowledge with others. This fall, CERO grew in both ability and recognition as an organization within the CNU and Peninsula communities.
Avery Naperala – Urban Agriculture and Food Security in Newport News
- Mission Statement: This project will explore how partnerships in the community will create opportunities to use urban agriculture to help to increase food security in the downtown Newport News community by creating better access to affordable, nutritious food in food deserts. Avery had a Ferguson Fellowship last year and will continue her work with the Newport News Green Foundation exploring the feasibility of an urban forest on one of their properties and the Parkview Baptist Church with their 2-acre community garden.
Lindsay Salmon – Give it UP Move out Recovery
- Mission Statement: CNU generates almost 20% of our yearly waste when students move out of the residence halls in the late spring. This project will work to connect those usable materials to community partners who can give them a second life.
Davis Pillow – Clean Energy Sustainability: Implementation of SolSmart for the City of Newport News
- Mission Statement: The City of Newport News is committed to becoming a SolSmart-designated community to advance the economic, social, and environmental benefits of clean energy. The goal of SolSmart is to increase the efficiency of local processes related to solar development, which may save our local government and community time and money.
Audrey White – Conscious Consumer
- Mission Statement: Our Conscious Consumer Sustainability Fellow will work to connect our CNU community to lower impact products and services, highlighting local vendors wherever possible. They will use our social media platforms to provide reviews of personal care and household use products as well as help to expand the “Buy it Better” List of procurement-approved local and more sustainable vendors for CNU goods and services.
2019-2020 Projects
Brittany Branch – Confronting Educational Injustices in South Africa
- Mission Statement: In both South Africa and the United States, there exists pervasive and debilitating social injustice in the education systems. I will travel to South Africa to directly confront these issues by interviewing those who have been directly impacted by the conditions of the education systems. This in coordination with literature reviews and analysis of existing data will allow me to develop a conclusive report with recommendations for moving toward a more tolerant, class and race inclusive, and accessible education system in both nations.
Nicolette DeFrank – Cage and Controlled: The Link between Animal Abuse and Domestic Violence
- Mission Statement: The purpose of this project is to provide greater contextual knowledge on the relationship between domestic violence and animal abuse in battered women’s shelters in Hampton Roads community and the United States at large. By gathering qualitative and quantitative evidence from a variety of sources, we can more accurately recognize the link between domestic violence and animal abuse in the area, and gather information which may ultimately help to provide a holistic solution.
Malik Dickens – The Civil Discourse Initiative
- Mission Statement: Educating and fostering the Christopher Newport University community with space, tools, and principles to engage in civil discourse and the expression of freedom of speech.
Spencer Koger – Creating Leadership in a World of Bright Leaders
- Mission Statement: Our purpose is to create a stable foundation for young individuals to learn and grow about leadership. From history’s most significant enemies to its greatest allies, leadership has evolved and changed with our social reality. As young and inventive individuals seek to challenge every threshold so to do, we, by challenging young individuals to learn how to lead.
Peter Miller – Save a Life Peninsula Community Instruction Initiative
- Mission Statement: This endeavor seeks to address a need for the instruction of lifesaving first-aid skills such as bleeding control, CPR, and AED use in the Hampton Roads Community while fostering a greater sense of community unity and active citizenship through the combining of efforts from all societal members to care for their fellow man. Additionally, this project will seek an expanded effect to combat violence, operating on the notion that with the knowledge to save a life comes with it the intentionality and responsibility of doing so. These endeavors will be meticulously documented and researched in an attempt to further persuade governments and policy makers of the vitality of this project and create a trailerable outcome for any community who wishes follow.
Avery Naperala – Increasing Access to Nutritious Foods in Newport News
- Mission Statement: The goal of this project is to assess actual community needs related to the ability to access nutritious food, including fresh fruits and vegetables, and to devise a realistic and sustainable solution that incorporates green space and encourages residents to interact with their food production.
2018-2019 Projects
Kaija Craft – Mental Health Resource Fair
Hannah Croyle & Jonathan Pilsch – Youth Development in South Africa
Nicolette DeFrank – Caged and Controlled: The Link between Animal Abuse and Domestic Violence
Malik Dickens – Civil Discourse Initiative
Asia Farmer – The Giving Bookshelf Expansion
Ethan Martin – Special Olympics Area 33 Golf
Nicole Oliashirazi – Hospitality Care Kit
Grace Overman – Psychological First Aid
Emma Seguin – Cultivating Community
Caitlyn Snead – The Love Newport News Initiative: Connecting Our Campus with Our Community
Rachel Wagner – Hearts and Minds: Continuing the Wellness Action Team for Captains’ Mental Health